How to Win Any Bourbon Argument

You've gone and done it. You've expressed a preference for a bourbon within earshot of another person. Little did you realize that arguing about bourbon is now our sixth most popular sport, behind arguing about "grape vs. grain" vodkas, parenting strategies, craft beers, workout regimens, and college football.

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Bourbon arguments are inherently pointless, but, since you have no idea why you were really put on this earth, you might as well assume it was to make sure other people know when they are wrong (rightly defined as, "The moment they have an opinion other than yours, even about stuff you've never heard of").

Thankfully, few know what you know: that the world of craft alcohol remains wondrously un-cataloged, and the subjectivity of taste experiences—on top of making our lives richer and more democratic—also make it possible to win an argument about bourbon without actually knowing anything about bourbon.

Here's how.

1. Respond to any suggestion of a kind of bourbon by saying, Oh, I've had Way Better.

Throw down this verbal card like snapping trumps from a brand-new deck, then take as much time as possible acting as if this is merely an expression and not the name of an actual brand. Let your opponent wear himself out running his mouth while furnishing you with information on how he argues and what he focuses on. This is word judo.Remain still. When your opponent finally surrenders to the name in bafflement, explain that it's spelled, "Wheybedder," and that he merely misheard. If you have any experience with using Scots-Gaelic spelling in arguments about that people's liquor, try adding superfluous H's or an Aig somewhere. Ultimately, the name doesn't matter. What matters is so thoroughly disorienting this person that he goes silent.

2. If he's still talking, imply a celebrity connection.

Even the most confident opponent will be tempted to defer to international man's man George Clooney if he apparently quaffs regular Maker's Mark. Exploit your opponent's tendency to overvalue the opinions of famous people. For instance:

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• Jim Jarmusch loves this bourbon so much that, if you can drink only three ounces of it per year, you get to appear in one of his movies as yourself.

• Do you remember the mosquito scene in Jurassic Park where they extracted the DNA? They couldn't get the color of prehistoric amber right, so they had to freeze this bourbon. The bourbon you're drinking right now. Nature finds a way. Nature finds a way.

• There are five golden tickets in every batch of this bourbon, and if you get one, Tom Waits calls you via VoIP and sings you a song using only native Bourbon County distillery label contents and any 25 words of your choosing as the lyrics.

• I'm not even supposed to know this, but this is Bono's bourbon. No shit, really! He bought a distillery in Kentucky under the name Tyree Belvedere Mortmain. One tenth of every bottle is distilled from the headwaters of the Nile and the desalinized tears of him, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel.

3. Create a founder's legend.

Legends work, because they tie products to myth, bypassing what is an essentially scientific process with serendipity and grace.

• It was Stonewall Jackson's favorite bourbon, but they only started making it again in the 1960s after the owner talked to his great-granddad, who fought at Chancellorsville, and only gave up the recipe in a cloud of dementia and the certitude that all Yankees were dead and wouldn't be able to drink it.

• The owner is a hardcore Libertarian who began making this for barter because Jimmy Carter was going to impound all American gold. You haven't heard of it, because until recently he wouldn't let anyone buy it with fiat currency.

• The recipe was a total accident. It only turned out this way because a colt kicked a barrel and changed the mash at just the right moment. That horse's name? Citation.

Push any brown liquor's flavor profile too far in one direction and it can become another brown liquor entirely, which is why self-styled booze wonks romanticize how their drink is made more than its taste. Seize this weapon as your own! Make up anything credible about the irreducible, senseless complexity of the bourbon process.

• It's a small batch made only by concerned dads.

• You can pick up an odor of sanctity because the mash is first filtered through the remaining rags of St. Anselm.

• It comes from a part of Kentucky where cats aren't allowed near rivers or above certain parts of the water table, which has a huge PH impact. Cops won't tell you, but most mainstream bourbon is pee.

• Each of the bottles in the small batch has been personally frowned at by a heavyset man.

• Mendicant friars bring this drink from Bourbon County to Lexington only once every twelve years by creek, portaging their canoe and navigating by astrolabe. They're entrusted with it only after taking vows of nasal poverty.

• An actual piece of race horse is placed inside each barrel for flavor.

5. If pressed for actual details, make up virtually anything about its flavor/mouthfeel/agility/endurance.

• The strong smoky profile comes both from the oak and from the water, which was used to extinguish the Great Chicago Fire.

• The bourbon actually extrudes impurities in your blood because all of it is magnetized.

• If you drink it in a perfectly still room, you will get hints of lily, mocha and leather, and you can hear the first time your mother smiled when she looked at you.

• It's aged only in casks that were walled inside a cellar with a murder victim. His slow wasting agonies moistened the air.

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• Each bottle is hand-stirred with a cedar branch that's been skinned down to soft wood and dipped in black widow curare. Amplifies the burn. It's basically Kentucky's answer to fugu.

If your opponent persists, you have two last-ditch options:

6A. Change tacks and go populist.

When an interlocutor expects to challenge you on ever ascending planes of epicurean sophistication, you can destroy his confidence by kicking the chair out from under him. Nothing halts a craft-beer snob quite like claiming Schlitz's "kiss of hops" makes it a classic session lager. Likewise, the sort of person who argues bourbons probably long ago stopped thinking about Evan Williams. However, if your opponent doubles down on snobbishness and arcane knowledge of micro-batch stuff, after you rhapsodize about Four Roses, pull the Joe Welch "decency" card from the Army-McCarthy hearings. Ask, politely and with dismay, "Is that really all it is for you?" It can be price, location, certain flavors, exclusivity. Really? Really? That's all it is for you?

6B. Make your fictitious bourbon part of a holistic, epiphanic life quest.

Remember, many people insist on being jerks about locavore cooking, molecular mixology and exclusive tastes to relish your non-enjoyment. They're not drinking or eating for their pleasure but because they know it is not one of yours. That's why exclusivity means so much: it reifies the life you can't have. The ultimate reply is a bourbon that changes you, that takes you on an irreplicable journey beyond and into yourself. Your unique satisfaction is the worst taunt because your opponent cannot have it. So, if you're in a real jam, tell them this:

You cannot find the greatest bourbon in the world by asking for it. You can only encounter it after a 20-year enchanted sleep. First, lay your head on top of an opened issue of SkyMall and close your eyes. Defeat the giant who appears in your dream wearing the face of your father. Jump three times by the elder tree. This gives you pizza, which maxes out your energy. Pappy Van Winkle is the end boss of this forest. You must trade straight punches to each other's solar plexus until he whimpers and surrenders. Only then will you get the key to the roadster, which takes you on a causeway through a boundless river to meet The Nightingale. When The Nightingale returns with a jug of what appears to be tobacco spit, thank him in Mandarin, which awakens you. You discover your extremities are slowly turning to jade, and the jug is beside you, with a heady oak scent and spitty mouthfeel. The bourbon stops the jade process and restores your hair to the moment in life where you believed it looked the most lush and vulpine. The bourbon mostly tastes like Knob Creek, but who cares? Deep down, you're more of a wine guy.

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